Night Moments
by fairwinds09
Summary: A series of vignettes capturing Kate and Gibbs at night.
1. Dreams

Title: Dreams

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Not any in particular

Disclaimer: I keep debating whether or not to call up Donald P. Bellisario and ask him if I can start legally borrowing his characters for fanfics if I promise to return them in time for the show. Until I get an answer from him, you can safely assume that they don't actually belong to me--I'm just playing with them on the weekends. :)

A/N: Okay...so this is going to be a massive word count, multi-chapter fanfic (sort of along the lines of Undercover). It occurred to me one day while I was sitting around at work with absolutely nothing to do. It's basically a collection of vignettes about Gibbs and Kate--but all of them either center around or happen during the night. And they are loosely based on the events in Season 2 (for right now, anyway). I may put them in chronological order...I may not. We'll just have to wait and see. But I am so excited to finally be writing another "big" story (by which I mean one with more than one chapter). I hope you'll be excited too. So please--read, review if you feel so inclined, and enjoy!!

(Sidebar: Some of you have asked if I'm going to finish "Undercover." Some of you thought I had. All I can say is that no, it's not finished; yes, I have one chapter left to write; and no, I have no earthly clue when I will finish that chapter. I have sort of a vague idea as to how it will go, but at the moment I just can't get it to gel. When I do, you will be the first to know. Thanks for all the support!!)

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He dreams of her.

He's lying under his boat, exhausted after hours of sanding by hand and numerous sips from a coffee mug of bourbon. It's been a long week—but then, for him the weeks are never short. It shows in the deep shadows carved under his eyes and the weariness in the sharp lines in his forehead and around his mouth. He's stretched out on his back, flush against the hard wooden platform where he's building his boat. The half-finished ribs rise above him like a primitive canopy, stretching up into the dimness of the ceiling until his tired eyes can no longer make them out. He turns a little, trying to block the faint light shining from the bare 40-watt bulb hanging overhead, and lets his eyes drift shut as sleep comes to claim its own.

She's sitting there beside his boat, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them like a little girl. She's wearing jeans and a soft grey sweater, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. He can see the glint of silver in her ears and at her wrist where her sleeve is pushed back to show a slim, practical watch. As he looks up at her, her lips curve in a smile of mixed tenderness and amusement, and she reaches out with one hand to ruffle his hair playfully.

"You finally awake now?" she asks softly, a tinge of laughter in her voice. He grins and rubs a hand over his face, scrubbing away the lingering exhaustion with the rough swipe.

"Yep," he mutters, voice hoarse and husky. "Don't you have anything better to do than watch me sleep?"

She tilts her head and laughs at him, her dimples popping out irresistibly.

"I guess not," she admits cheerfully. "At least you don't snore."

He smirks a little and reaches over to capture her hand, playing with the small fingers, amazed at how his palm so completely engulfs hers.

"Aren't you the lucky one," he says sarcastically, thinking that she could be getting a much better deal than this. An old, grouchy, embittered former Marine is no great catch, at least not in his book. But she seems to have other ideas.

"Yeah," she says quietly, her eyes shining down at him in the dim light with an emotion he doesn't dare describe. "I think I am."

His chest is suddenly heavy and his throat clogged, his heart pounding with suppressed excitement and emotion. He needs to break the tension, cut the tenderness that's threatening to overflow in this unexpectedly intimate moment. So, tugging on the hand he's holding, he pulls her toward him, grinning when she loses her balance and topples over with a small squeak. Outraged, she swings at his chest, swearing good-naturedly.

"Dammit, Gibbs! What was that for?" she asks from her new position slung on top of him, her hands planted on the floor beside him for balance. He merely slides a hand up to the back of her neck and tugs her down to his mouth, smiling in the middle of the kiss at her huff of helpless exasperation. When they finally break apart, she's flushed and short of breath and trying very hard to still look angry.

"You think that'll get you off the hook?" she says threateningly. He cups a hand over her cheek and strokes the soft skin with his thumb, barely able to repress his smirk as her eyes flutter shut at the sensation.

"No, Katie," he says lowly, running his fingers through the dark silk of her hair. "It's too late for that. I've already taken the bait."

She's taking another swing at him when all of a sudden the feeling fades, the sound of her low chuckle switches off, and he wakes up with a start to the feel of hard wood against his back and the smell of sawdust in his nose. He's still alone in the dusty basement, and there's no trace of Kate in sight. Groaning, he hauls himself up, one hand pressed to his aching back, and looks around for his mug of bourbon. After about five minutes he finds it sitting on the shelf next to his can of spare nails, right where he left it before he fell asleep. He tosses down the small amount that's left in the bottom of the mug, hissing as it slides like fire down his throat to the pit of his stomach. Taking one last look at his boat, he shakes his head at the memory of his regrettably unfinished fantasy and heads upstairs to spend the rest of the night stretched out on his couch.

He has his head buried in a none-too-soft sofa cushion and an afghan pulled up around his neck to fend off the bitter chill of an early spring night in D.C. as he falls asleep. He's gotten used to sleeping under his boat or on his couch rather than in the bed upstairs. After three failed marriages, he's actually more accustomed to the feel of the sofa. And he's discovered that climbing into bed by himself seems to only reinforce the realization of how alone he really is. He'd rather dodge reality, he's decided. At least at nighttime.

Oddly enough, all of a sudden he realizes that he's not exactly alone anymore. Somehow or another, he missed the presence of someone else in the room, despite the fact that he's been trained to notice everything around him like a bloodhound on the hunt. Even so, he must have not noticed her curled up in his big leather armchair, the one he bought during his second marriage to appease the taste of his then-wife. (After she left he'd thrown out or sold most of the things she'd bought, but he had developed a fondness for the armchair.) And there is Kate, head resting against the high back, legs tucked up into the seat, her face quiet and serene in the faint moonlight that shines in through the crack in the drapes. Puzzled, he walks over to her and lays a hand lightly on her shoulder, trying to figure out what the hell she's doing in his living room at three o'clock on a Thursday morning.

At the brush of his hand, she jerks awake, eyes wide and startled in her pale face. He grips her shoulders firmly to keep her from jumping out of the chair, bending down so she can see his face. As she realizes who he is, she relaxes back into the soft leather, blowing out a long breath of relief.

"You scared the hell out of me, Gibbs," she whispers fuzzily, screwing her eyes shut in an effort to wake up a little. Sighing, she pushes the hair back out of her face and peers up at him owlishly.

"What are you doing here, Katie?" he whispers back, hardly noticing that he used the nickname he rarely ever calls her. It bespeaks intimacy and understanding, two qualities that he dares not even hint at in their relationship…at least, not during the day. But nighttime is different, he tells himself.

"I was waiting for you," she murmurs, jolting him out of his brief reverie. Startled by her simple statement, he stares down at her speechlessly. Slowly, she unfolds herself out of the chair and stands in front of him, close enough so that in one breathless moment he could easily reach out and take what he's wanted for so long. For a heart-pounding second, he nearly succumbs. But with gritted teeth he manages to keep his hands at his sides and his eyes on her face. He can't cross the line tonight.

"I've been waiting for you a long time, Gibbs," she observes quietly, and he's not sure whether or not she means that statement literally or metaphorically. But as she moves a little closer and slips her hands to his shoulders, he's beginning to get a feeling she's not talking about hours on a clock.

"I'm tired of waiting," she whispers heatedly, barely inches away from his mouth. She's igniting a slow-burning fire in his blood, a white-hot brush of flame throughout his body. He is just moments away from grabbing her up in his arms and carrying her over to that couch and showing her exactly what she's doing to him with soft words and slow seduction. But no matter how hard he tries, he can't make himself move out of the trance she's put him in.

It doesn't seem to matter, though. She's moving fast enough for the both of them. "You know something?" she whispers, brushing his lips lightly with her own. "I don't think I want to wait anymore. Let's make up for lost time, Gibbs." She moves her head just enough to brush another of those phantom kisses over his cheek, slides down a little to nip at his jaw. "Let's make up for it right now. Tonight."

He can't take it anymore. He's wanted this since the first time he saw her standing there on Air Force One, her eyes shooting daggers and her feet planted like a gunfighter ready to fire the first shot. He's worked with her for a little more than a year now; they've covered countless crime scenes and run countless investigations together, and he still wants her just as much—if not more—as he did that first evening. And now she's standing there, her arms around him and her small body pressed against his, offering him everything he's ever dreamed of doing with her and never could. He simply can't resist.

"All right, Katie," he murmurs against her busy mouth. "No more waiting. For either of us."

He can feel her smile against his mouth as she kisses him again, soft and sweet and agonizingly slow. Her arms wind around his neck, her hands slide into his hair, and this time he pulls her flush against him, hungrily devouring her mouth. She's perfect, he thinks through the haze that's rapidly overtaking his brain. Beautiful, sweet, smart, tough—she's what he's been waiting for nearly twenty years and never thought he'd find again. And for tonight, at least, she is his.

He lifts her effortlessly, smiling at her little gasp of surprise, and carries her over to the couch on the other side of the room. As he lays her down on it and sits beside her, the thought crosses his mind that she may be making the biggest mistake of her life. She's young, smart, ambitious—she has everything before her, an entire life she has yet to experience. Sleeping with her much older boss could destroy her, embitter her, at the very least break that shining optimism that so often gleams from her smile. If he were any kind of gentleman, any kind of lover, he'd get up and walk away right this moment, let her go and tell her it's for her own good—that she can find somebody much better than him somewhere out there.

But to his shame, he discovers that he has no scruples left where she's concerned, no ability to step away and nobly let her leave. He wants her too badly for conscience or kindness, too badly to deny himself even if he knows it will cost both of them somewhere down the line. And so he bends down to kiss her once again, sliding one hand beneath her back as she arches upwards into him, his eager fingers slipping under the edge of her shirt to stroke the smooth skin he's coveted for interminable months.

She moans low in her throat and holds him tighter, her eyes closed as his mouth travels lightly over her face, her throat, over the soft skin of her shoulders while his fingers make quick work of the buttons of her shirt and slip it silently away. He can feel her hands on his chest, and for a moment he freezes in fear that she's pushing him away, telling him to stop. He's not entirely sure he can let her go now, even if she no longer wants this terrible inferno that is building between them. But then he realizes that she's not pushing him away; she's tugging at his undershirt, trying to pull it off so she can run her hands over him with the same freedom he's taking with her. With a deep groan, he complies, his breath hissing out between his teeth as her small fingers run approvingly over his bare skin, skimming over muscle, curving over bone. He's never felt quite like this before, never had this strange blend of trepidation and overwhelming desire coiling in his gut. But then, Kate has always been able to defy his expectations. He fails to see why this time should be any different.

This time when he wakes up, he expects the cold, dark house to be the first thing he sees. He's hardly surprised that he's lying alone on the couch with only the afghan for comfort, that there's no evidence of those all-too-brief moments when he held Kate in his arms. He doesn't know why he's dreaming of her tonight—or rather, he won't let himself think of why he's dreaming of her tonight. He's having trouble deciding which is worse…holding Kate in his dreams and knowing that the feeling can't last forever, or waking up and realizing that he'll have to see her again today and remember all that happened in his sleep. Neither option is exactly appealing.

He can think of only one thing that will keep the dreams at bay, as it has so many times in the past. And so he pushes up from the couch with a grunt, throws the afghan on the floor bad-temperedly, and stumbles into the kitchen, hitting the lights as he goes. Blinking against the harsh glare, he pulls open a cabinet door and grabs a can of ground coffee. In an automatic motion he dumps the coffee into the machine, pours in water, and punches the on button, sighing in relief as the percolator begins to bubble cheerfully. He sinks down into one of his kitchen stairs, staring blankly at the wall opposite him as the scent of coffee begins to fill the room.

Finally the pot is full, the smell of the strong black brew hanging rich in the air, and he clumps over to the counter to pour himself a tall mug of the stuff, sighing in relief as he takes the first long swallow. It's hot enough to scald the roof of his mouth, stout enough to jump-start his system with a miniature explosion of caffeine. But tonight he welcomes the pain and the adrenaline, relishing the feel of the blood pumping faster, harder through his veins. He doesn't want to sleep anymore tonight, doesn't want to see her face in his dreams and feel her small body warm and pliant in his arms.

Glancing at the clock that hangs above the stovetop, he realizes that it's almost 4:30 AM, only a few hours until he has to go to work and see Kate again. He groans in the silent kitchen, the sound bouncing off the walls and the tiled floor, and scrubs a rough hand through his hair in an effort to clear his head. His aimless gaze lights on a folder sitting on top of the cabinet that sits in the far corner of the room, the heavy blue paper bearing the distinctive "NCIS" seal. For the first time that evening his eyes light up and his face takes on a little of its usual determination. Work is his salvation, he reminds himself as he gets slowly to his feet and grabs the forgotten file off the counter. He doesn't know what case it is, doesn't even think to care. All he wants is to lose himself in the work for the brief respite he has left.

But as he tops off his cup and sits down at the table, as he pulls the file towards him and opens it to reveal a cold case from two years back, as he squints at the small print and takes another slug of the scalding coffee, he cannot erase from his mind the thought of Kate tilting back her head in surrender as he made love to her…stronger than a shot of his best bourbon, more potent than the whisky he keeps in a bottle in his kitchen drawer. He can't drive her away, can't shake her off, can't push her aside, no matter how thoroughly he tries. And he knows with a sickening sense of inevitability that he is going to dream of her again.

It just may not be tonight.


	2. Sleepless

Title: Sleepless

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Umm...basically all of Season 1. More or less.

A/N: Hope you like the latest installment...this time we get to see Kate's side of it (which is naturally a good deal more verbose). By the way, I do apologize for reviewing Season 1 to such an extent. I simply couldn't let a whole season of Kibbs interaction go completely unnoticed. Besides, I thought a little background might be nice to sort of give the reader an idea of how far I've taken the attraction between them at this point. So...I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know what you think!!

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She can't get to sleep tonight.

She's tossed and turned for more hours than she cares to think about, curled and uncurled herself into a dozen equally uncomfortable positions, twisted the sheets and blankets into an unrecognizable mass of crumpled fabric at the end of her bed. Nothing seems to help. She's almost to the point of taking one of the little pills she has sitting in her bathroom cabinet, the ones left over from the time she had her wisdom teeth taken out. But she's not quite sure she'd be able to wake up in the morning, and she'd rather deal with the agony of a sleepless night than be late to work. Not with Gibbs there, anyway.

Gibbs. She wishes she hadn't thought of that name, wishes she hadn't unwittingly reminded herself of the reason she's lying flat on her back at 3:00 in the morning, staring sightlessly at her ceiling and memorizing the pattern of the wallpaper on the opposite side of the room. All of this is his fault, she tells herself crossly, frowning up at the unresponsive ceiling and trying to ignore the chill that's creeping up over her exposed skin. The little knot of tension in the pit of her stomach, the bunched-up muscles in her back and shoulders, the splitting headache that is constantly lurking at the edges of her consciousness—all of it is directly attributable to him. And she hasn't the slightest clue what the hell she's going to do about it.

He's been bothering her ever since he marched onto Air Force One and started ruining her crime scene, making demands and creating disturbances and generally being a pain in the ass until the whole thing culminated in her almost getting kicked off her own turf and having to bargain with him to stay on the plane. She told him that night that she thought she was destined to shoot him, and the experience of working for him for over a year hasn't changed that conviction in the slightest. In fact, if anything, it's only strengthened her resolve. One of these days she's simply going to snap, pull her service weapon out of the drawer where she always keeps it, and start firing wildly at the nearest filing cabinet. And if one of the bullets should happen to ricochet and catch him in the shoulder or something, well…so be it.

She sighs in the darkness, unable to keep the memories from flooding in and reminding her of all she's sworn to forget. She has an endless panorama of snapshots in her head, moments from the past year or so that seem to be indelibly burned into her brain. And all of them seem to have something to do with him.

She remembers her unwilling attraction to him on Air Force One, the hard flint of his eyes as he told her that Tim was dead, the rough comfort of his arms around her as shock and grief set in. She remembers the half-mocking timbre of his voice as he offered her a job, and her disbelieving stare following him as he turned and climbed in a silver car with a gorgeous redhead sitting behind the wheel. She remembers the brush of his fingers against hers as he handed her a shoebox with a pair of the ugliest boots she'd ever seen in her life. And so, investigating her first crime scene with NCIS, she climbed around in a muddy field in combat boots and a pencil skirt and felt happier than she had when she bought her first Prada knockoff .

She remembers his cool glances when she made a comment or a suggestion, his curt orders and the little tilt of his head when he was listening intently as one of them proposed a new theory or linked together fresh evidence. She remembers the ache under her breastbone when he looked straight at her, without pulling any punches, and told her she disappointed him. She hadn't felt that sick combination of regret and anger and impotent pain since high school. But she felt it that day.

She remembers that he wasn't always such a bastard. That he would push and prod and poke and probe until he got what he wanted out of the team, but that he never let himself forget that they were people. People he cared about. She remembers her frustration when he told her that she couldn't let personal motivations get in the way of a crime scene. She remembers how tired she was when it was all over, how a 19-year-old boy's suicide seemed to suddenly shatter the foundations of her world, how she kept seeing his mother's grief-stricken face superimposed over an unresponsive statue of the praying Virgin. But most of all she remembers the kindness in his eyes when he turned to her as they were leaving and asked if she was okay. She'd wanted to throw herself in his arms and weep out her grief and bewilderment and anger at the injustice of a world where belief could protect neither the innocent nor the damned. She'd held herself together, patched the broken places with a half-hearted attempt at a smile. But he'd known—she'd seen it in the barely perceptible flicker at the corner of his mouth. And simply knowing that he understood what she was thinking had been comfort enough for the night.

She remembers the breathless chemistry that she'd always felt around him, the sense of a restless energy that all-too-rarely was focused solely on her. She remembers the tingling excitement that seemed to spread from her hairline to her toes when he looked at her in just that way, when he would throw out one of those sly innuendoes that could mean anything or nothing at all. She remembers being thrown against him on a surfacing sub and for a heart-pounding moment feeling his broad chest beneath her cheek, his breath blowing softly through her hair. She remembers the feel of his big hands holding her shoulders, keeping her safely against him until they could finally stand upright. She relived that moment for weeks afterward, letting her senses recreate the feeling until she could barely tell what she actually remembered and what was merely a fantasy in the dark. But if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that he'd been affected too. And the knowledge gave her a sly sense of power that filled her with unreasoning delight.

She remembers laughing with him on the rare occasions when he wasn't stern and serious, remembers privately noting how his smile made the lines around his mouth and eyes a little softer, his face a little more open. She remembers joking with him about nerds and Robert Redford, and watching him watch her out of the corner of his eye as she licked slowly at a lollipop. She remembers him asking her why women always had to fix what didn't need fixing, and the dazzling smile that had spread across her face as she dared to banter with him on equal ground. She couldn't help it. She always smiled for no reason when he was around.

She remembers his hands smoothing down a borrowed uniform, his eyes taking her in with a mixture of pride and possession and just a touch of greed. She remembers her heart pounding under her mixed-up ribbons as he told her that she was "lookin' good," and how the off-hand compliment played itself incessantly in her head like a song on the radio that she just couldn't forget. She remembers the adrenaline that flooded her veins when a bullet splintered the glass not five feet away from his head, forming a star-shaped pattern as beautiful as it was deadly. And she remembers the pained reproach in his eyes and the tiny twitch of humor around his mouth as he berated her for leaving the office without her cover.

She remembers riding with him in the agency car on the way to a lab they would never reach, running her eyes over him clandestinely so she wouldn't miss a detail of how he looked in his stark black suit. She remembers feeling his eyes run over her in her simple black dress, and how the sensation made her forget for a moment that she was at a funeral for a man she'd worked with and grieved for. She remembers sitting silently with him in a tiny apartment on stakeout, torn between wishing that she could leave so she wouldn't be tempted to jump him where he sat and hoping that McGee and DiNozzo would never arrive so she could have just a little more time alone with him. She remembers the cold fury in his eyes and the shock in hers as he put a bullet in the head of a woman he'd never met before, and the nausea that twisted in her belly as she took in the ruthlessness of his face. She'd never been truly afraid of him before that moment, and it had been a sobering realization to discover that she was attracted to a man who was capable of murder in cold blood. But it made no difference then. Just as it makes no difference now.

She remembers the helplessness in the lines of his weathered face as he searched for a man he loved and respected, the hot determination as he stood between his friend and every agency that threatened to take him in. She remembers the grudging acceptance in his eyes when his team waylaid him on his way to the elevator and told him that all he had to do was ask for their help. And she remembers the grief she saw in his bowed head as he held the colonel in his arms, the older man's shaved head cupped in one callused palm as they relived the memories that they could never share with anyone else.

She remembers standing in a high-vaulted church, smiling at the retreating back of the priest, and turning to see him pull out his lighter and light two candles beside the altar at the front. He hadn't knelt, hadn't bowed his head in prayer or shown any of the other outward signs of devotion. But she had seen it in the weariness in his eyes when he turned around, the faint tightening of the muscles around his mouth. She'd known better than to ask who the gesture was for or why he'd made it. She'd done it anyway, because she couldn't walk silently away without letting him that she cared. He hadn't let her in, and she hadn't expected he would. But they had both known what she meant.

She remembers sitting at a wooden picnic table with blood on her lip and hatred in her eyes as she watched a terrorist manipulate walnut shells with slim, deft fingers and clever hands. She remembers the unwilling attraction she felt towards him, the anger and the fear as another woman's blood pooled cold on the ground. But most of all she remembers that when the team found her, Gibbs was the first one there, the first to take her by the shoulders and inspect her lip with fire in his gaze, the first to ask where she'd been and what had happened and how she'd been abducted by the man they'd been searching for over the long months of work and worry. And she remembers that as Ducky inspected her mouth and Tony and McGee examined the crime scene, he was there in the background—handling details, demanding explanations, doing all the things he did so well for a living. He was there. And just knowing he was present made the cold knot of fear in her stomach begin to slowly dissolve.

But reliving the memories of him, of all the crime scenes they've covered and all the cases they've solved, are hardly likely to help her get to sleep. And so she climbs slowly out of bed, groaning as she registers all the achy muscles she'll undoubtedly feel miserably in the morning, and pulls on a thin silk robe over her pajama bottoms and tank top. Nights are still chilly in D.C., even though it's already springtime, and she doesn't want to add a cold onto her laundry list of other worries. Rubbing her eyes crossly, she grabs a hair clip and bundles her dark mane on top of her head as she pads through the darkened hallway and into her kitchen, swearing as she stubs her toe sharply on the corner of a cabinet. Hopping on her uninjured foot, she switches on the little lamp she always keeps on her counter and swings open one of the cabinets above the sink.

Her fingers quickly grab what she's looking for and she sighs in relief as she pulls down the little black-and-yellow box with the elegant scripted label that says "Twinings" scrolled across the side. Setting it down, she rummages in her pantry and comes up with an electric kettle and a big blue mug with the Secret Service header printed on it neatly in big white capitals. And as she fills the kettle, opens the box and pulls out two tea bags, and settles down in one of her kitchen chairs to wait for the telltale steam to begin pouring from the spout, she can feel the worst of the tension seeping out of her neck and shoulders.

It's the best panacea for sleeplessness she knows—hot tea steeped in an oversized mug and made just a little too strong, maybe with a few cookies for good measure. It's what her mother used to do when she was little and couldn't fall asleep, from the time she was too small for her feet to touch the floor when she sat at the kitchen table through all the stresses of high school and even a few of college. Other kids' mothers made warm milk or Ovaltine, gave them a mug of cocoa and sent them off to bed. _Her_ mom made hot tea with exactly 3 ½ spoons of sugar and sipped it with her over sugar cookies and snickerdoodles. Some of her favorite memories in the world are of late-night talks with her mother over cups of steaming tea, telling her about homework and boys, problems with her brothers and dreams of being a lawyer and someday falling in love. And all of a sudden she's gripped by an insane urge to pick up the phone and dial the number she knows better than the lines on her own palms, just so that she can hear her mother's voice over the phone as she sips strong tea and nibbles sugar-dusted cookies.

But even as she wishes it, she knows that her mother died three years ago and her father moved to a new house less full of memories and sadness, and that even if she calls that painfully familiar number all she'll get is the buzz of a dial tone or the emptiness of a stranger's voice. And so she steeps her tea and digs out a round tin of homemade snickerdoodles and begins to munch on one alone.

Besides, she tells herself wryly, what exactly would she tell her mother even if she _could_ talk to her again? That she's contemplating walking into work next morning and shooting her boss in sheer frustration? That her hormones have been humming and her fantasy life has blossomed since she started working for a man with ice-blue eyes and more failed marriages than Billy Joel? That she, a nice little Catholic girl, is contemplating committing two or three of cardinal sins per night with a man nearly twenty years her senior? Or that no matter what she does, how emphatically she denies it or how desperately she wishes she could escape, she can't stop thinking about Leroy Jethro Gibbs?

Because that's really the trouble, she admits to herself as she stirs sugar into her tea and takes the first bracing sip. Certainly Gibbs can be a bastard at times. Certainly everyone on the team has fantasized at one time or another about following in the footsteps of one of his multiple ex-wives and taking a baseball bat to his head. But it's not really his bad temper or his stubbornness or even his lack of communication that's got her in such a mood tonight. It's that she can't help liking him in spite of it.

She really doesn't know what's wrong with her. Older men have never really been her type. Nor has she ever been particularly attracted to a boss. When she was in the Secret Service, she thought of Bauer as a mentor and later a friend, but she never caught herself daydreaming about him at work or wondering what he did at night. If she'd happened to brush against him in the elevator, she didn't feel a shiver race up and down her spine, didn't feel goosebumps tingle on her arms. If she'd had to deliver a report to him, she didn't find herself fighting the clench of nerves in the bottom of her stomach or struggling to keep her voice firm and clear. If she'd received one of his infrequent looks of disapproval, she hadn't felt like wilting into a little ball of disappointment in a corner until he looked away. And she can't figure out why she has all of those reactions with Gibbs.

Part of it is that he's good, she muses as she takes another long sip of tea and breaks off the corner of another cookie. He's really good—one of the best agents she's ever known, and she doesn't know whether it's because of his natural talent or his training or a strange combination of both. But either way, he's creative, clever, sharp, inventive, always one step ahead of the game, always one moment closer to finding the answer than everyone else. He has gathered together the best and the brightest to help him—and she feels privileged to be part of that group. They are unequalled within the agency, she knows—possibly one of the best teams in the entire field. And they owe a great deal of it to the man who sits at the desk beside her every day…his tenacity, his courage, his fortitude, his skill.

What she has never been able to understand is how a man who is so good at figuring out other people's motives can never seem to pick up on the emotions of those who care about him most. He's so often completely clueless, she thinks. Oh, he's perfectly well aware of all their office interactions. He knows when she and Tony are giving McGee a hard time, when Tony's giving her grief about some guy she's dating and when Abby's feeling blue. He can read Ducky like an open book and he can probably even figure out what's going on in Palmer's head…not that anyone would really want to in the first place. But she can't fathom how he could have remained blissfully unaware of her terrible attraction to him for the year or so she's been at NCIS.

She's glad he's so oblivious, though, she thinks with a wry little curve of her lips. It's more than a little humiliating for a strong-minded, focused, dedicated career woman of the 21st century to feel so…so what, she asks herself? So dizzy, so overwhelmed, so hopeless, so giddy, so excited, so depressed? So intrigued by a relationship she should never explore and a man she can never have. But if there's one thing her mother instilled in her, it was a sense of honesty—at least with herself, if no one else. And as Kate finishes her mug of tea and stares blankly at her quiet kitchen, the truth is no less apparent in the plain wooden doors of her cabinets than in the hustle of the bullpen or the enforced quiet of a stakeout. She's attracted to Gibbs, and there's really nothing she can do about it except bemoan her own unlucky fate.

Rising, she goes over to the sink and rinses out her cup and plate, leaves them in the bottom of the sink to be dealt with in the morning. For once, her mother's panacea didn't work, she muses sadly. Her head is clearer, her thoughts less jumbled. But she's still nowhere close to sleepy, and she knows she'll have dark circles and reddened eyes in the morning. Briefly she thinks of all the insinuations Tony will make about busy nights and exhausting activities, and decides she doesn't even want to go there tonight. Better to leave that to the morning along with the dirty dishes.

Sighing, she turns away from the sink and heads toward the living room, willing to try the dubious comfort of old black-and-white movies on cable at 4:00 AM. She plops down on the couch and flicks though a couple of channels until she finds Turner Classic Movies, which is currently showing Billy Wilder's _Sabrina_. It's one of her favorites, and she finds herself smiling despite her tiredness as Audrey Hepburn gradually beguiles a closed-off Humphrey Bogart, who somehow can't seem to resist her charms no matter how much he tries. Ruefully, she acknowledges the parallel to her own situation, tries to smile at the irony of it. Because however much she may tell herself that she doesn't believe in happily ever after and soulmates and the power of true love, she knows perfectly well that she's a romantic at heart…one of the women who always believed as a little girl that somewhere out there was a knight on a white charger waiting just for her. And in some well-hidden corner of her heart, she believes it still.

Gibbs isn't her knight in shining armor. He isn't even close. But at the moment, he's all she wants, all she needs, all she desires. Her problem seems to be that she simply can't wrap her mind around the fact that something so wrong can feel so right. She can't run away from the realization anymore, can't disregard it or push it to the back of her mind. She wants more than what she's got, and he's the only one who can give it to her. The great pity of it all is that as far as she can tell, he'll never let himself even try.

And so, as Hepburn and Bogart waltz gracefully through the lines of their story, unrequited love gleaming from every glance, she hugs her pillow and thinks of a silver-haired man sleeping under a boat in his basement. Her eyelids droop a little and she can feel a yawn building in the back of her throat. But she can't get that picture of him out of her head, and as long as it's there she knows she might as well give up on falling asleep. There's no use anyway, she muses. She was doomed from the first moment he entered her mind.

It looks like it's just going to be another sleepless night.


End file.
